MAN ABOUT TOWN

I need your help. Not in a 'please may I have one of your kidneys' kind of way. Not even in a 'could you write a letter of support to the government for me?' way. No, I just need your advice. Quite soon, on July 6, I turn 40. It's something that both delights and surprises me. Delights because quite frankly, there have been times in my life (primary school in the years when a nuclear holocaust seemed imminent; adolescence when suicide seemed like an option; as a hell-raising 20-something) that I never thought I'd make it this far. Surprised because I don't feel on the verge of 40. I know I certainly don't act 40; not by the standards of previous generations at any rate (by my age my parents already had two teenage children) or even in comparison to most of my peers, who by and large are tucked into bed and sound asleep at the times I'm still out and about and painting the town hot pink. All that's besides the point, however. What the fuck am I ...

It's rare that I walk out of live theatre, at least in comparison to films, which I am wont to abandon should I find myself hating the movie I'm watching. This is because I know the actors won't be hurt by seeing me get up and walk out in a cinema, as they can't actually see me, not being present except as two-dimensional representations. It's also because I tend to see more film than theatre, and after years of film festivals, have less qualms about debating the merits of sticking it out vs wasting my time on an unenjoyable experience. When my old friend Sean and I went to see the latest MTC production on Thursday night, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman , I didn't walk about as such, but I didn't go back into the theatre after interval. In part this was because I was tired, and The Pillowman is a long play; two and a half hours. It was also because I found myself really disliking the production. I definitely think the play needed editi...

Six things to do when you've locked yourself out of the flat and are sitting on the front steps waiting for your housemate to come home: 1. Read The Melbourne Times and wonder at the ratio of real estate ads to editorial that's not about local politics. 2. Ring your mother. 3. Try picking your own lock with a piece of wire, and fail. 4. Regret not hanging out more with the tough kids in school, who could have taught you how to pick a lock with a piece of wire, in between calling you 'poofter' and beating you up. 5. Send tipsy text messages to friends inviting them to hang out somewhere that isn't your front step. 6. Alarm your neighbours when they walk around the corner unexpectedly to find you necking your bottle of chardonnay because otherwise it would get warm. Cheers!

According to The Age online this afternoon, St Kilda live music venue the Palace has thrown in the towel . The 'entertainment complex' will close next month, having lost the battle with developers for whom its site is a juicy piece of beachfront real estate. I can't say I'm grief-stricken - I'd be far more upset if the POW was to close - but that said I'll be sorry to see the Palace go. I've had some fun times there, from cavorting on stage half-naked and covered in fluro paint with The Ergot Derivative, to memorable gigs from the likes of: and and and even Farewell, Palace. I shan't miss your sweat-box conditions and crowds, but I shall miss the opportunity for new memories.

An uncomfortably crowded HiFi Bar last night, coupled with a really bad mix (someone shoot the sound engineer!) and being v.tired after work and my first session in the gym with a personal trainer (please don't laugh; it's a work-thing contra deal arrangement and it's only once a week, ok?) could not stop me enjoying myself at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! last night. They was good. Ebullient even. By the time they played 'By The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth' I would have danced, had I not been hemmed in by several very cute boys in the crowd, and the afore-mentioned tiredness and etc. I was also, truth be told, slightly drunk after two absinthes and then a glass of bubbles at the HiFi. I would have preferred to see them later in the week at a better venue though...

Finished work last night and went out for a quick Vietnamese meal in the city before embarking on a brief absinthe tour of two Melbourne bars, The Toff in Town and Cookie , which helpfully are in the same building as one another. (As an aside, the links above are to Age reviews of the bars; and really, they should take their photos at night, as the daylight photos on the paper's website are utterly lacking in atmosphere). The Toff had a very limited range of brands on offer; only four, one of which was the utterly vile Green Fairy brand, which all good absintheurs should avoid like the plague. The brand I eventually chose, which I hadn't tried before, was Jacques Senaux Blue , from Spain (80% proof). Because I always drink my absinthe with sugar and water in the traditional fashion (although most places insist on setting the sugar alight, which is flamboyant, whereas actually the water should be slowly dripped onto the sugar until it dissolves - incidentally, the only plac...

She's feisty, ferocious and confrontational, and scares the shit out of a lot of people while angering others. But her recent article in UK newspaper The Guardian , about the cultural importance of the recent Eurovision win by Romany lesbian Marija Serifovic, has made me fall in love with Germaine all over again. Bless!

I caught up with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's sequel to the excellent and truly terrifying 28 Days Later at a 10.30am session on Sunday, with only about six other people in the theatre at Melbourne Central, so for once I wasn't distracted from the screen by idiots' phones, chattering and etc. Following the accidental release of the experimental 'Rage' virus from a research lab, which turns those infected into ravening, red-eyed psychotic killers, Britain has been devastated (as seen in the original film, a contemporary zombie movie in everything but name, directed by Danny Boyle and starring versatile Irishman Cillian Murphy). The population has been wiped out, while the infected have eventually starved to death. Now, 28 weeks later, a US-led military force has begun to repopulate London, starting with the so-called 'Green Zone' on the Isle of Dogs. The film follows one of the few survivors, Don (Robert Carlyle) first as he saves his own life at the cost of hi...

Some stuff you simply must see:- The 4th annual Emerging Writers' Festival - the best new writers you haven't heard of....yet. Takes place this coming weekend, opening with a free gig Friday May 25 from 7pm at Paddy's Bar, Trades Hall;and featuring panels, workshops and a publishing trade fair, as well as the highly recommended Scrabble gig on Saturday night at the BMW Edge. Last year's EWF (pronounced 'yoof') focus was on indigenous writers; this year it's non-Anglo writers. Beats the shit out of the Melbourne Writers' Festival any day, trust me. If you love words, writing and ideas, GO! Theatre at Risk 's superb production of Vanessa Bates' Checklist for an Armed Robber , now on at Trades Hall until Sunday May 27. Quite simply, the best theatrical production I've seen so far this year. Taut, complex and moving, with the powerful simplicity and poignancy that only the best writing has. Twice in its one-hour running time this masterful prod...

A couple of people have recently mentioned of late that the frequency with which I've been posting has reduced somewhat. To these people I say, "well aren't you the observent ones!" For a couple of reasons (workload, too tired to go out, having some virus-thing for the last week or so) it's true I've not been posting much. Thus, anecdotes about dinner with that lovely couple , Mr and Mrs Path-Android; seeing both the play and the film of The History Boys , and enjoying both despite their flaws; the excellently entertaining way my Eurovision night played out at the soon-to-be-reverting-to-its-non-rock-and-roll origins Spanish Club; none of that has been recorded for posterity on this here blog. So, you miss out on my self-indulgent ramblings, and I miss out on recording my day-to-day life, as this blog is as much my diary or journal as it is anything else. Such is life. That said, ever since I became the Chair of Fringe a few weeks ago I've also been cont...

It's not often, as you're huddled in an armchair on a Saturday morning, leafing through The Age and waiting for your hangover to abate to a more manageable level that will actually allow cognitive thought and beyond-basic motor functions, that your own name unexpectedly leaps off the page you're attempting to read and sears itself into your retinae. Ten years ago, essayist and author Mark Davis published his remarkable, timely and well-argued polemic Gangland ; an exhaustively detailed critique of the poisonously pervaisive influence of certain coiteries of commentators over Australia's arts and media. Not surprisingly, said cultural gatekeepers closed ranks after the book's publication and in a classic example of shooting the messenger, launched a series of venomous attacks upon Davis and Gangland in order to discredit his hypothesis that "an older generation of cultural apparatchiks, used to being at the centre and having a strong media presence, more or les...

A Very Happy 2 nd Birthday – Is Too! “Even bigger than TV Hits when you unfold the Home and Away fold-out” ~ John Safran, TV Personality Publishing oddity Is Not Magazine is all red in the cheeks to have reached its 2 nd birthday and is celebrating in style with another of their entirely fabulous fundraising parties. Saturday 2 nd June seemed an apt date for a 2 nd birthday party, and the Is Not folks have lined up a spangled posse of solid gold entertainment for their party The Golden Years, at Miss Libertine , in line with their All That Glitters Is Not Gold issue theme. Performing show-stopping tap routines at two special times in the evening will be The Golden Girls, a troupe of women aged 65 and better! On the wheels of steel will be DJs Mafia, Barrie Glitter and Plump N Rosie, as well as rising bands of the indie music scene, The New Electric and Near Your House. Is Not Magazine is a 1.5 metre x 2 metre billboard poster/magazine – that’s r...

Bigot, homophobe and arch-conservative, the Reverend Jerry Falwell , has shuffled off this mortal coil at last. What a shame there isn't a hell for him to go to. This is, after all, the man who founded the Moral Majority; who warned that the Teletubby Tinkie-Winkie was part of a homosexual propaganda campaign on the basis that he was purple and had a triangular antenna; who said that "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals... AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." Perhaps my favourite Falwell quote, though, is in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, when he said, " I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way… all of them who have tried to secularize America… I point the fi...

Over at AfterEllen.com (your handy guide to absolutely everything lesbionic on the small and silver screens) I've just learned about what surely must be the silliest concept yet for a reality TV series. Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, I give you: Pirate Master . "Ok admit it," quoth one of the trailers for this new show, "everyone's dreamed of being a pirate some day, right? " Possibly when I was seven or eight, I suppose, but honestly? Not lately... "I'm going after that treasure. I'm down for that treasure hunt," says Ben, 23, a Boston student/musician.* Down for that treasure? Oh dear god. Or, to put it another way, 'Belay that! These swabs be addled, I tells ye, arg!' But can you guess what's worse? The true, stomach churning horror that lies hid beneath the saucy veneer of this, admittedly fun-in-a-silly-way program? IT'S HOSTED BY CAMERON DADDO !! Oh, the horror, the horror!! *Can you imagine the looks on his...

Tonight is Eurovision night: a celebration of camp, kitsch, Euro-pop, power ballads, big hair, white suits, hilariously bad synchronised dancing and so much more. Please join me at The Spanish Club for three hours of fun, with your host Ms Sam Wareing, and the acerbic quips of Terry Wogan. The fun begins from 6:30pm, with Euro-songs from the past and a trivia quiz, with the actual Eurovision telecast from 7:30pm. Ukraine! Ukraine!

Cherry Rock on Sunday, AC/DC Lane. The joys of Digger and the Pussycats, the always-awesome Dynamo! (even though they don't have an exclamation mark as part of their name I always think they should) and many more. Vodka in abundance. Excellent conversation. Felt like a bit of a spare wheel from time to time, tagging along with different people at different times, as none of my closest friends were there, but still had heaps of fun. Forced myself to leave at a civilised hour too, just before 8pm, as I had work tomorrow and knew it would be way too easy to stay out til all hours, especially as I had the offer of my name of the door at Dirty Sanchez , a bunch of maniacs who do strange, gross, painful and hilarious things to and with their bodies. Think Jackass but with Welsh accents. In the Shadows of Opulence : an installation at Seventh Gallery in Gertrude Street by Charlotte Amos, Betra Fraval and Skye Kennewell that the artists describe as " an exploration of excess and desi...

Now, I thought it was cool* when some 4000-4500 Melbournians got their gear off for artist Spencer Tunick at the 2001 Melbourne Fringe, when Tunick himself was only expecting 800 people to show up. I thought it was even cooler when 7000 people posed for him in Barcelona 's Maria Christina Avenue (which looks beautiful by night, I must say - you should go and see it some time) in 2003. But way to go Mexico City! An a mazing 18,000 people stripped for his latest nude installation/photograph, including one person in a wheelchair. Beautiful. Thanks to Andy @ Towleroad for the head's up on this one. *As in literally fucking cold - it was freezing , but fuck it was good fun - a memory I'll treasure forever.

No, this is not a post about the fact that, according to my horoscope today, my love life is about to drastically improve with Venus moving into Cancer today. It's about something I saw yesterday: the launch of the City of Yarra's Relationships Register. Following a brief comm itment ceremony, Jeff Chiang and Rodney Cruise (accompanied by their baby son Ethan) became the first couple to sign the register, and in doing so helped make history. “You are my best friend, my lover, and the father of my son Ethan,” each said to the other in turn, before a celebrant, family and friends. “I now proudly take your hand as you have taken my heart.” It brought tears to my eyes, I can happily say. Ain't love grand?

Spider-Man 3 is a limp, lame and turgid film that fails on a number of levels. Like last year's largely unsuccessful Superman Returns , it's sadly lacking in excitement. The melodramatic interludes played out between Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and long-suffering girlfriend Mary-Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) lack conviction, and the film's three super-villains, the Sandman, the Green Goblin and Venom, are hurled into the story so quickly that their backstories are thinly drawn and perfunctory. The pacing is off, too; quite simply, the film just falls flat, especially during its so-called climax. The most laughable point comes when Peter, always the nerd-next-door, suddenly goes all emo, complete with eyeliner and fringe, thanks to the influence of the spoooooooky black Spider-Man suit. It's all too silly for words. Avoid as you would a trapdoor spider. Spider-Man 3 sucks.

It's been a quiet week, which was much needed after the madness of the Comedy Festival. I've been getting to bed early, drinking less, and generally recharging my batteries. Not much to blog about as a consequence, although things should soon bounce back to their general madcap rate of hyperactivity. Normal blogging will resume shortly.

I just found out what happens when you accidentally put a $20 note into a tumble-dryer along with your wet washing. It shrinks. So, now I have this minature $20 note, that apart from being a little crinkled, and about 35% smaller than it should be, is quite unharmed. I wonder if it's still legal tender?

Saturday witnessed all manner of mirth and merriment at the penultimate night of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival club at the HiFi Bar, not the least of which was a pole-dance-off between rapidly-shirtless Adam Hills and Hannah Gadsby. Their performance, an undoubted highlight of the evening, soon segued into the presentation of the festival awards, in a brief ceremony overseen by MC Lehmo. The winner of the festival’s prestigious Barry Award (named after inaugural patron Barry Humphries) was British comedian Daniel Kitson, for his show It’s the Fireworks Talking . Upon accepting his Barry, which recognizes the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Most Outstanding Festival Show, the endearingly shambolic Kitson launched a vitriolic attack upon the festival’s major sponsor, The Age , and specifically the authors of the paper’s Diary column, Suzanne Carbone and Lawrence Money, who described Kitson as ‘aesthetically challenged’ in the April 23 edition of the...